ADC and DAWN Call on Jordan to Drop Case Against American Journalist Ali Younes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 17, 2026

Washington, D.C. | The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) call on Jordanian authorities to immediately drop all charges against American-Jordanian journalist Ali Younes, who was detained, prosecuted and barred from leaving the country for four weeks under the country’s draconian Cybercrime Law. Younes allegedly reposted an American magazine article questioning U.S. aid to Jordan, a claim he denies.

Jordanian authorities lifted the travel ban last week and Younes, a reporter with Dropsite, has since returned to the United States, but the case against him remains open before the public prosecutor and can be revived at any time. Although Younes faces up to three years in prison, the State Department did not visit him, attend his hearings or publicly demand that the charges be dropped, despite the more than $1.5 billion a year the United States provides.

“The severity of these charges — and the local media attacks over the alleged sharing of an article published by an American outlet — raises grave concerns about freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Journalists must be able to report, share information, and scrutinize governments without facing criminal prosecution for protected expression,” said ADC President and Legal Director, Jenin Younes. “These freedoms are fundamental to any society that claims to respect basic civil and human rights.”

Jordan’s parliament should repeal the 2023 Cybercrime Law under which Younes was charged.

Jordanian intelligence officers detained Younes at Queen Alia International Airport on August 17 when he arrived from the United States on a reporting trip, held and questioned him for at least five hours, and ordered him to appear before prosecutors. On August 24, he was charged with undermining national security, threatening societal peace, sedition, hate crimes, incitement to violence, and denigrating religion. He pleaded not guilty and was barred from leaving Jordan.

Younes told ADC and DAWN that the charges against him were based on an alleged retweet, made while he was in the United States, of a July 6 opinion piece in The American Conservative by Jordan analyst Aaron Magid, titled “Stop Sending Billions in U.S. Aid to Jordan.” The article called for reducing U.S. assistance to Jordan to its 2006 level of roughly $400 million. Younes is a former Al Jazeera correspondent who has contributed to The New York Times, CNN and the BBC. His profile on X carries the disclaimer that retweets are not endorsements. He has never advocated cutting U.S. aid to Jordan.

The prosecution was accompanied by a campaign in Jordanian media and on social media that Younes says publicly incited against him and put his life at risk. Middle East Eye reported that the director of Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. Ahmad Husni, personally signed off on the arrest. Ammon News, an outlet close to the intelligence services, published an article portraying Younes as a “tool used to undermine [Jordan’s] national security and [its] positive stances on Arab and Islamic issues.” In September 2016, Jordanian writer Nahed Hattar was fatally shot on the steps of an Amman courthouse after the prime minister ordered him investigated over a cartoon he had shared on Facebook. His family blamed the government’s public incitement for his killing.

“Prosecuting a journalist for sharing a link is not about protecting national security. It is about shutting down any trace of discussion about repression in Jordan and U.S. aid,” said Raed Jarrar, Advocacy Director with DAWN. “Letting Ali Younes leave the country does not end this case, and it should not end the scrutiny of a government that receives millions in U.S. aid despite systematically stifling dissent.”

Younes told DAWN and ADC that throughout the four weeks he was under a travel ban and facing criminal charges in Jordan, no one from the U.S. Embassy in Amman visited him and no embassy official observed any of his court appearances. Neither the embassy nor the State Department issued a public statement calling for the charges to be dropped or the travel ban lifted.

The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations guarantees consular officers the right to visit and communicate with detained nationals, and the State Department itself lists visiting detained citizens “on a regular schedule” among the services it provides. On September 5, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order creating a “State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention” designation, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio declaring that “anyone who uses an American as a bargaining chip will pay the price” and that the administration was “putting Americans first.” The White House credits the administration with securing the release of 72 detained Americans, from Russia to Afghanistan. The Robert Levinson Act, on which the order builds, directs the State Department to weigh factors including the fairness of the detaining country’s judicial system and credible evidence of the detainee’s innocence in deciding whether an American is wrongfully detained. Neither the order nor the Act has been invoked in Younes’s case.

Younes is the second Arab American journalist this year known to have been detained by a close U.S. ally in the MENA region over social media posts without eliciting much response in Washington. Kuwaiti authorities held Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, a U.S. citizen, for nearly two months beginning March 3 over posts about the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. A Kuwaiti court acquitted him, and the State Department’s only public comment came after he had left the country, confirming that it had “provided consular assistance.”

Jordanian prosecutors charged Younes under Jordan’s Cybercrime Law No. 17 of 2023, which King Abdullah II ratified on August 12, 2023. Many human rights organizations urged the government not to pass the law. The Committee to Protect Journalists warned at the time that the law could see journalists facing harsh prison terms and huge fines over their work. Article 17 of the law punishes online content that “stirs up strife,” “insults religion,” constitutes “hate speech” or “justifies violence,” none of which it defines, with up to three years in prison, while Articles 15, 16 and 20 criminalize “false news” and “character assassination” with fines of up to 50,000 dinars. Amnesty International documented hundreds of people charged under the law in its first year alone, many for posts expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, criticizing the government’s policies, or calling for peaceful protests. In September 2024, a coalition of Jordanian and international organizations called on the newly elected parliament to repeal or fundamentally amend the law, citing the arrests of many journalists and lawyers over their perceived dissent. The law’s vague, catch-all offenses violate Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Jordan has ratified, and the guarantee of freedom of opinion in Article 15 of Jordan’s own constitution. Applying it to a U.S. citizen for something he allegedly posted while in the United States extends Jordan’s censorship far beyond its borders.

DAWN and ADC call on the Jordanian government to drop all charges against Ali Younes and guarantee that he faces no further harassment or retaliation for his journalism. Jordanian authorities should release everyone detained or convicted under the 2023 Cybercrime Law for peaceful expression and on the Jordanian Parliament to repeal it. The State Department should publicly demand the dismissal of the case, to conduct a wrongful detention review under the Levinson Act, and to report to Congress on the consular services it provided to Younes and to every other American detained for speech by a U.S. ally in MENA since January 2025. U.S. officials should also make clear that no country prosecuting American journalists for protected speech should expect its U.S. assistance to continue unchanged.

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About ADC

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is the largest Arab American civil rights organization in the United States, founded in 1980 by former Senator James Abourezk. ADC takes on powerful institutions and interests that threaten Americans’ constitutional rights and civil liberties. Our impact litigation and legal advocacy challenge government overreach, defend freedom of speech and dissent, and protect the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. ADC also works with national and international media to challenge discrimination, stereotypes, and misinformation, while ensuring Arab American perspectives are represented accurately and meaningfully in public debate.